Albany Reform

Hours after the MTA announced that it would be scaling back planned fare hikes in part because of better-than-expected tax receipts, Governor Cuomo vetoed two transparency bills designed to discourage Albany from siphoning away those very same dedicated transit funds. The governor capped his veto with a brazen denial: Despite getting caught raiding the MTA's budget earlier this year, Cuomo insisted that he's done no such thing.

This afternoon, a coalition of more than 200 groups sent a letter to Governor Andrew Cuomo [PDF] asking him to sign the transit lockbox bill, which would help safeguard dedicated transit funds by requiring the state to disclose the impact of any raids on transit agency budgets. The pressure is on: The governor has until the middle of next week to sign or veto the legislation.

The transit lockbox bill, which would help safeguard dedicated transportation funds by requiring the state to disclose the impact of transit raids, still awaits a signature from Governor Cuomo following unanimous Senate and Assembly votes earlier this year. Now, two upstate newspapers are calling on the governor to sign the bill.

On Wednesday, Governor Cuomo announced a new raft of publicly-accessible data on the state's data transparency website, data.NY.gov. Some of the data sets include information that was already accessible in different forms, while other sets are newly available to the public. The release also includes detailed information about individual crashes from the Department of Motor Vehicles, but it falls short by failing to say where crashes occur.

The transit lockbox bill, which would require Albany to disclose the impacts of any raid of dedicated transit funds, passed both the Senate and Assembly unanimously in the final days of the legislative session, reports the Tri-State Transportation Campaign. It now heads to Governor Andrew Cuomo's desk. A nearly identical bill reached Cuomo in 2011, but the governor gutted the disclosure provision and signed a toothless bill. This time around, will Cuomo put pen to paper and protect transit riders?

Albany has long used the MTA as a piggy bank, raiding dedicated transit funds on a regular basis to cover gaps in the state budget. As a result, straphangers are squeezed as transit agencies resort to fare hikes and service cuts to make up the difference.

In the wake of a scandal-soaked week in Albany, Governor Cuomo held a press conference this afternoon with district attorneys from across the state to announce a new anti-corruption law. As he seeks to tighten the rules in Albany, Cuomo could take immediate steps to make sure a transportation funding mechanism that featured prominently in last week's scandals is fortified against abuse by lawmakers.

For years, Albany has raided the state's highway trust fund, using general tax revenue to patch holes. This year, the governor's budget, as filed in the Senate and Assembly, includes a mammoth $625 million road bailout, larger than the $519 million projected in the financial plan and higher than most trust fund bailouts in previous years.